Secretary of the Home

I would rather be at the beach. Ok, I would always rather be at the beach, but today, in particular. The boys went back to school and the husband went back to work. I didn’t get called to work, but that didn’t mean I sat around eating bon bons. I am not sure I even had lunch today. I used my “day off” to catch up on my other job – secretary to the boys and the husband.

My plan was to knock out a few tasks, then spend the afternoon sewing. As I plowed through the mountains of paper that arrive in our mailbox, my list of tasks grew. In addition to the usual cleaning, tidying, etc that has to happen every day, here is what sucked up the rest of my day.

*Balanced credit card statements

*Balanced bank statements

*Paid bills

*Called Verizon to straighten out a billing error

*Called the tour group for the school spring break trip to sort out a reservation issue

*Found receipts for the holiday gifts that need to be returned

*Schedule time on my calendar to run around town to return those gifts

*Emailed the contractor and lumber supplier to sort out the final payment for the new screen porch. This also required pulling lots of receipts and invoices to verify payments, refunds, etc.

*Exchanged emails with the high school principal about the upcoming parent teacher conferences. (I handle the scheduling of all the parent teacher conferences… for the entire high school of 1400 students. Yeah… that’s a real party.)

*Printed return labels and boxed up holiday gifts that need to be returned to Amazon. (Tomorrow, I “get” to take them to the post office. Yay, me!)

*Verified a huge stack of Explanation of Benefit forms from the insurance company. They make mistakes, so I have to look at those carefully.

*Called the hospital billing department to sort out a billing error

*Had all of the husband’s prescriptions transferred from our old mail order prescription plan to our new mail order prescription plan

*Set up online access for our new medical insurance. Since my son is now 18 years old, technically, I am not suppose to have access to his medical information without his consent. As long as I am paying the bills, I should have access. Besides, he would prefer I have access because he doesn’t want to deal with this mess. So even though he is a dependent, he has to have his own account with the insurance company. Yay… another login name and password to remember.

*Submitted dental claims for the boys dental check ups from right before Christmas

*Exchanged emails with the attorney who is rewriting our wills

*Researched diet information for the husband’s elevated blood sugar

*Started pulling together information for our tax return

In the middle of all that, I still had to do my knee routine: icing every two hours, foam rolling, and an hour of stretching and strength training. This was my “easy” day. Tomorrow will be at least two hours in the gym with my PT guy, plus icing, foam rolling, and stretching at home. No sewing happened.

When the husband got home this evening, he asked, “You didn’t work today?” He meant “You didn’t work AT SCHOOL today,” but he left out those two important little words. I wanted to throw a frying pan at him, but the boys were there. Can’t have any witnesses. I told him I was at my other job today… Secretary of the Home.